By Himasutha Reddy
Tokyo, July 23: The much awaited Tokyo Olympics have begun! This year, the Olympics will be held in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, from 23rd July 2021 to 8th August 2021. The summer Paralympics will be held from 24th August to 5th September 2021. This is the second time Tokyo is hosting the Summer Olympics and is the first city in Asia to hold the Summer Olympics twice.
Image source: Official Twitter handle of @Olympics
This year, 11,091 athletes from various countries will be taking part in the Olympics. 205 out of 206 countries are competing in the Olympics this year. North Korea is the only eligible country that is not participating in the Tokyo Olympics 2021.
Aren’t there 193 countries in the world that are part of the United Nations and two non-member observer states: Vatican City and Palestine? Yes! The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has the power to decide the countries that can participate in the Olympics. The country/group the IOC decides to grant the permission to participate in the Olympics is known as National Olympic Committee (NOC). Therefore, the 205 countries participating this year can be termed as 205 NOCs and a few of NOCs participating are not exactly countries.
Here’s a breakdown of the 205 countries participating this year:
A new rule made by the International Olympics Committee this year is that every country should have flag bearers from both genders during the opening ceremony to represent gender equality.
A Tokyo 2020 Medal Project was conducted to manufacture the medals that will be distributed during the Olympics this year. In the project, used mobile phones and electronic devices all over Japan were collected between April 2017 and March 2019. From all the devices, 71 pounds of gold, 7,700 pounds of silver and 4,850 pounds of bronze were collected. All of the medals are made from the collected gold, silver and bronze.
In the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020, polo and tug of war are discontinued. Baseball (discontinued from 2008), karate, sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding will be making their debut in this year’s Olympics. The Olympics this year will have 339 events in 33 different sports.
The Japan National Stadium is the main venue for the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020. It was renovated and inaugurated on 21st December 2019. After Tokyo bid for the 2020 Olympics (which got postponed to 2021), the stadium was inaugurated. With a seating capacity of 68,000, this multi-purpose stadium will be the venue for the opening, closing ceremonies and the track and field athletic events.
Here’s a list of all the 41 stadiums (excluding Japan National Stadium) and the games that will be taking place in the stadiums:
